An e-mail newsletter for
and about Waverly people, used with permission in the HLW Herald and on
this web site.

Feb. 18, 2002

I am still swiping most of my material from the treasure
trove of old Waverly Stars given to me by the McDonnell sisters (Mary McDonnell
Anderson, whose husband was Dean Anderson who passed away tragically young,
and Catherine McDonnell Westrup of Winsted, who also lost her husband,
Don, at a tragically young age.)

Their gift to me just keeps on giving. Their family, of
course, were the owners and publishers of The Waverly Star. Many-a-night
I stay up late, reviewing the events and names of the past.

Small town papers are like community scrapbooks. I only
wish Waverly had a public library where we could read about ourselves and
our families, reminisce, and laugh and cry.

For example, in the "Ye Towne Gossip" section
of the July 3 edition of the 1952 Waverly Star, we learn that:

"A.S. Mellon of Minneapolis was out from the city
Tuesday looking after business matters in Waverly."

"Mrs. Herman Grangroth and son, Harvey; and Mrs.
Wilfred Epple and children; and Mrs. Frank Dostal drove to New Brighton
Wednesday to visit the Jacob North family."

Dick Mattson tells me Harvey now lives near Cokato. Harvey
was a very good guy, one of the hardest workers I ever knew. Harvey used
to give me rides to the Green Giant Company in the summer of 1952.

"Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon Kingstedt of Minneapolis were
in town Saturday."

And this just in: "Kenneth McDonald, Hollywood farmer,
had three cows killed by lightning while standing near a wire fence."

It doesn't say whether it was Kenneth or the cows who
were standing by the fence. Since it was my mother who wrote this item,
I wish she were still around so I could ask her.

"Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy?
I don't know and I don't care."

­ William Safire

It's a wise dog that scratches its own fleas

I found out that the reason people have trouble keeping
apostrophes straight is because an apostrophe is shaped crooked.

A common error is to write "it's" for "its"
or vice versa. The first is a contraction, meaning "it is." The
second is a possessive.

The following information will provide comfort, I hope,
to all of us who confuse its with it's and hers with her's and O'Leary
with Oleary.

If the Herald staff can learn these rules, it will also
be a relief to Dale Kovar, the co-owner and publisher of this newspaper,
whose nightmares are people who cannot learn the rules governing apostrophes.

He has been known to put his staff on bread and water
for such lapses.

Although it is difficult to straighten out something,
which by definition is crooked, there are rules in civilized society to
which we must all agree at the risk of chaos.

The pronominal possessives "hers, its, theirs, yours,
and ours" have no apostrophe. Indefinite pronouns, however, use the
apostrophe to show possession, such as in one's rights and somebody else's
umbrella.

So, truly, it's a wise dog that scratches its own fleas.

Is apostrophe trouble caused by ignorance or apathy? I
don't know and I don't care.

But even so, educated people should know that hens lay;
and even dogs with fleas just lie around. And that's no lie.

A sign on a semaphore crossing here in Corpus Christi,
Texas at the intersection of Doddridge Street and Ocean Drive:

"To cross Ocean, press button."

"I like you very much" is an Englishman's way
of expressing uncontrollable lust.

Here is a poem I like:

Sometimes

Sometimes things don't go, after all, from bad to worse:
some years muscadel faces down frost: green thrives; the crops don't fail;
sometimes a man aims high and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war; elect an honest
man; decide they care enough that they can't leave some stranger poor.

Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go amiss; sometimes
we do as we were meant to.

The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow that seemed
hard frozen: may it happen for you.

­ Sheenagh Pugh

Sign in a Corpus Christi clothing store: "Unattended
children will be captured and sold as slaves."

When you're down and out, lift up your head and shout
. . .

"Sweet are the uses of adversity, which like the
toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head;

And this our life exempt from public haunt, finds tongue
in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every
thing.

I would not change it."

­ William Shakespeare

As You Like It

Act II, Sc. i

Will power. Will Shakespeare's, that is

"T'is in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our
bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners: so that if
we will plant nettles, or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply
it with one gender of herbs, or distract it with many, either to have it
sterile with idleness, or manured with industry, why, the power and incorrigible
authority of this lies in our wills."

­ William Shakespeare

Othello

Act I, Sc. iii

Another poem I like:

By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Earth's crammed with Heaven, And every common bush afire
with God,

But only he who sees takes off his shoes . . .

The rest sit around and pick blackberries.

Glen Keener says the way to inner peace is to finish what
you started. So, I finished a chocolate pie, three bags of potato chips,
a tuna salad sandwich, and a bowl of ice cream before retiring for the
night. Finding inner peace, I slept like a dog and snored like a hog.

Is there a reason why we call butterflies, butterflies
instead of flutterbys? A stranger I was standing next to at a bar just
down the street the other day brought up this interesting question. It
took us a while to come up with an answer.

Since we didn't come up with one, we agreed to another
meeting in the near future to work some more on the problem.

I just came in off a trip in which I drove 3,280 miles,
mostly surrounded by semis whose drivers can't see you if you can't see
their mirrors. Fortunately, they are very good drivers and I think I probably
scared them more than they scared me.

Ever since my hitch-hiking days up and down Highway 12,
drivers of the big rigs, the 18-wheelers, have been my heroes. I don't
think the insurance companies will allow them to pick up hitch hikers any
more, though.

Did you ever think that they are our adventurous sailors
of the 21st century, and that the interstates are our rivers? And did you
know, all you little kids out there, that if you make a pumping motion
with your right arm, they will sound their air horn for you?